Loving to the End … and On

A couple of hours later, I returned home. Though unusual for me, I immediately checked the home landline phone for messages. The first one was from Bev’s daughter, who said, “Lynn, Reggie died about twenty minutes after you left.” The second message was from Bev, who laughingly said in an uplifted, teasing voice, “Lynn, you killed my husband. Call me.” The third message was again from her daughter, who told me how she, her daughter, and Bev had all three been in the room with Reggie when he took his last breath. Even more thrilling to them than being there in that moment was their experience with him. They wanted me to hear the whole story. Gathered around his bed, holding his hand, or touching his arm, looking lovingly at him, Bev thought she needed to be saying a prayer, and she was trying to remember words when she realized her daughter was already reciting the twenty-third Psalm. Her daughter asked whether Bev would like to listen to Reggie’s heart as it was slowing, very gradually ceasing to beat. With trepidation, she agreed and put her head to his chest. With his heart’s last beat, Reggie left, briefly taking Bev with him. She was exuberant when she told me about the experience of their consciousnesses departing their bodies together, its beauty, and, most of all, its intimacy, which she said exceeded any and all of their considerable physical intimacy in their twenty-nine years and ten months of a very happy marriage. …Because this happened about fifteen months before I wrote their story, I asked Bev to take a look at what I had written for verification or for changes she felt needed to be made. She said what few inaccuracies there might be would be too minuscule to matter, as they wouldn’t change the gist of the story at all. “And,” she added, “funny you should be thinking about this now. I went to a noon-day communion service at our church today and we sang ‘The Lord is my Shepherd,’ and I had a vivid recollection of the day that Reggie died in my arms because I was saying the 23rd Psalm when he took his last breath. I can never think of this Psalm without thinking of his gift to me when he died. It was the most wonderful thing I have ever experienced, and I will be ever thankful for that – and for you, too – being there with me. I don’t mind at all if you ‘publish’ this story. It is a story worth being told.” And again, days later in church, Bev re-experienced the exalting intimacy of her sharing with Reggie the experience of his transition. She told me that, because of their shared death experience, it had been the most wonderful day of her life and that her thoughts about death and dying were changed. …From childhood, then, you’ve rehearsed end-of-life care, except that it wasn’t quite the same. In today’s modern healthcare world, there can be large numbers of caregivers, some very specialized. And the people involved can be continuously changing. The exploration in this book is about traversing the shifting demands of loving as end of life approaches, completes, and often leads on. from Chapter 2…He was forced to spend time in the ward’s group room, “to learn to socialize.” At the time of his hospitalization, Dad had one remaining living friend who, at 98, was also restricted in his physical capacity; they talked often on the phone. At home, Dad had been visited daily by some of his children, grandchildren, or great-grandchildren. He had been visited frequently, also, by our friends, who loved him like a father. He knew “how to socialize.” What he did not know was how to fraternize with a half-naked, strapped-to-a-gurney man screaming obscenities at his wife. That seemed absurd – still does. Is there any reason an accomplished, long-lived, well-mannered man, one who had served on numerous Boards of Directors which included that of a hospital, needs to learn psychiatric-ward-blessed social skills? Is there any reason the family needed to consent to what felt increasingly like elder-abuse? Was this for the convenience of an attending physician or for the benefit of the patient? Was there no more loving way to accomplish what was needed? …The dad we had taken to the hospital never returned. Eventually, we sought help from hospice. There was no specific disease. He did not meet hospice criteria until I remembered that he had a brief period of home health care during a short illness about six months prior. Thankfully, I had kept those records…. enough to qualify him for hospice. And what a blessing to have qualified for hospice! Kind, considerate, trained workers checked on him and on us regularly. They evaluated and re-evaluated his need for medications that kept him calm and eased whatever pain he encountered in the process of his body’s shutting down. They made certain we knew what to do, how to do it, and when to call them for additional help. And they tutored us in knowing what to observe so that when the active dying process began, we would call them. They assured us they would also take care of having a death certificate legally signed, and they would call for our chosen funeral provider to come for his body. They would take care of business and give us the space to love. Six months after our dad entered the hospital for medication modification, he died at home, the place he had wanted to be. His death certificate read, “Cause of death: failure to thrive.” And yes, there was love, a lot of it. Still is. In the years since, what I did not know then, what I did not recognize has become more apparent. We will walk together through some of that in a later chapter.